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Note: I have had this project done since October and this is the only photo I have of it, from Instagram and from the fall. The post has been written since late last year, but I needed to get it out of my drafts folder.

This was a spontaneous project, I saw a cowl Carla had made and I figured it would be a good use for the skein of Groovy that had been sitting in my stash for far too long. When I had originally ordered the yarn (we don’t have a decent LYS less than 2 hrs from where I live, so I order 99% of my yarn online) it came a different color that I had expected. It is a very nice color, but it was basically the color of my peachy skin rather than the nice cream I had been expecting.

After having it live in my stash for nearly 2 years it was time for it to be made into a gift, and I still haven’t found the right buttons or the right person for it, it will find its way to the right person eventually.

I find that my loom is a perfect palette cleanser. I haven’t spent much time getting fancy with my weaving, so for it is mostly plain weave on my little loom. It’s like meditation to me, the constant rythym of up and down, back and forth gets me to a spot in my brain that I don’t seem to find with knitting, which I use to challenge me and to make increasingly complex items.

I like having a project on my loom, however I find that once I sit down at my loom I don’t find I get up until the item is finished.

This scarf was a bit of a surprise, the warp looked great, then as I wefted with the yellow (the same yellow used in the warp stripe) it looked terrible, and like it was all yellow. But when I cut it off the loom and washed it it magically became something really quite special.

Second time’s a charm. After a poorly warping my first scarf, I had some warp threads shred which resulted in a very short scarf. This time everything went right and I have a full sized scarf ready for Christmas gift giving.

I enjoy this sort of weaving, simple but creating a neat result. Having only two shuttles I’m sorta limited on my plaid options and I haven’t had the nerve to try out too many lace patterns, in part because I don’t have any pick-up sticks.

– Details –

Project Name: Second Try Houndstooth

Draft: Grab and Go Bag by Liz Gipson in Weaving Made Easy

Recipient: Probably Grampa

Yarn: Knitpicks Palette in Salsa Heather and Bittersweet

Modifications: None

New Skills: Actually not getting my warp threads shredded by using paper as warp separator.

Feedback:

Yarn: Palette has such great colors (they recently went up to 150 shades) but I don’t enjoy knitting stranded colorwork so this a great way to use it. It is a bit rough but it is perfect for weaving.

Draft: So easy and yet creates such a complex finished project.

Re-Weave?: Yep, I already have another one warped up and another 5 or so of color sets to go.

Most of my FOs have happened this way, Christina is online browsing for yarn, Christina buys a single skein of some yarn, Christina pets and oogles yarn after it shows up, Christina goes to queue to find a pattern for it, Christina vows to by more than a single skein next time she shops online for yarn after discovering she can’t find a pattern for her single skein. For Spectra it was the other way around, I actually ordered the yarn to go with the pattern.

It is a neat pattern, a really interesting shape and a great chance to try a new skill, intarsia. And I really wanted to knit something outside my normal range of things. This was a great break, although it did get tedious at times, I had to make myself knit two wedges a day so that it would be finished in time for me to start fresh with new projects for the Ravellenic Games (that coincided with the Olympics).

In the end I’m pleased with the result, and I think I’m going to use the leftovers to weave a scarf, with the Grey outside yarn as the warp (end to end threads) and the Chroma as the weft (back and forth yarn) to make sure that I don’t end up with a broken frayed warp and also to watch the slow color changes occur in a different manner to the Spectra-scope scarf.

I did a total of 100 color wedges instead of the 80-some called for in the pattern.

New Skills:

Intarsia: This is the first time I have done intarsia colorwork. I neither loved nor hated it, so if another pattern that I love calls for it I won’t be afraid.

Feedback:

Yarn: I find that with KnitPicks yarn you get what you pay for, it is a good price and you get good yarn, but it is sometimes just the right thing. I liked working with the Gloss Fingering, I like it more than the Gloss DK I used eons ago on the Shifting Sands scarf, and on par with the Gloss Lace of my Falling Leaves Shawl. The Chroma must be an acquired taste, because it did what was expected to do (have long color changes) but I didn’t enjoy working with the single as much as a like the single of Tosh Merino Light.

Pattern: My first time working from a Stephen West pattern, and it was nice, clear and short, some of the things I like most in a pattern.

Re-Knit?: Nope, it is a cool FO but I would much stoles and shawls to scarves (and I weave my scarves these days).

Buying yarn is a fun thing, you find a pattern you think you are going to love, you invest in the yarn and then it sits in your stash because either the pattern doesn’t work for you or you don’t really use knit bags or like wearing colorwork mittens.

That is how I ended up with a far too large stash of KnitPicks Palette. It is amazing yarn for colorwork, however I don’t enjoy colorwork, I spend too much emotional energy making sure my gauge isn’t too tight or stressing over the fact that I use needles several millimeters larger than called for to make it work.

I was able to destash quite a bit of it to fellow Guild members back in February, however I still held onto some of it for some odd reason and now find myself drowning in yarn I’m not interested in using and not valuable enough to go to the effort to destash through Ravelry.

However, after washing this scarf, I think the yarn has found its calling, it is soft and drapey and the colors are just amazing. I think colorwork is far more fun when I don’t have to worry about gauge and floats.

That’s not to say this scarf was without its challenges. Because of the warp seperator I’ve been using on my loom I managed to shred one of my warp threads, way back at the back apron beam, and so I decided to cut the scarf off the loom early and sacrifice the rest of the warp to either future striped scarf or for the compost bin. I should have narrowed the scarf and retied it to the front beam, but I was fairly discouraged and started cutting the warp off the back beam before I had really thought it through. Oh well, live and learn.

Also, let me know how you like these pictures. I have been watching the Craftsy class Shoot It on product photography by Caro Sheridan of Split Yarn so I have been trying out her techniques. Tomorrow’s FO post has my old photos, but the one on Friday has new pictures, and I’m pretty proud of those.

Two color weaving: This was my first time using two shuttles at the same time. I’m still not sure I understand how to make my two selveges look the same, but I was really getting into the houndstooth flow when my warp snapped/shredded.

Alternate warp stripes: To warp the houndstooth pattern I started each of my colors at opposite ends and direct warped alternate slots in both directions. This worked wonderfully, and I ended up not having to cut too many ends and my warp didn’t get funny from sliding off the apron rod from having too much tension on one side but not the other.

Feedback:

Yarn: It’s Palette, so the colors were amazing but because of my warp separator I had my one edge warp thread shred. I should have been smarter when warping and now that I’m on my second scarf like this I haven’t warped too close to the edge and used paper rather than plastic to separate my warp.

Draft: Easy and straight forward, but I LOVE the effect. I see many, many, many herringbone scarves and yardage in my future.

Re-Weave?: Totally, I already have my next one on the loom and a few inches into weave (although my currently garter mania and the Tour de Fleece are keeping me from really getting much weaving done).

(Note: this was originally a WIP Wednesday post that I changed the tense on and posted on Sunday)

Oh wow, the days are flying by.

Between my new job, and finishing up the website for my old job (I did the content, real designers did the layout and logos and coding) and knitting like the wind blogging has fallen to the bottom of my to do list.

However, this knitting like the wind thing has been great. I finished my Through the Loops Mystery Shawl KAL on Wednesday night. I also finished my Sweet Georgia KAL socks (the previously frogged green socks), I have my loom rewarped and I think I know what I want to spin for the Tour de Fleece.

Now I that it is the long weekend (still have two more days of vacation) I have finished my mystery shawl, and by the end of the weekend I will be halfway on my Spectra scarf, maybe get the toes knit on my new Time-y Wime-y socks and into the fourth short row section of Secrets of Change in some Tosh Sock in Opaline. Also, since finishing my green socks, I have been working on my latest plain Felici pair of socks and lunch, and maybe I will manage to get to the heels soon, but I’m not all that hopeful. It won’t be sport weight sock weather here till mid-Septeber/early-October, so I have lots of time, and three other pairs of Felici sport socks (and another skein waiting in the stash).

Also, I would love to get another scarf woven, mostly because the last one had a warp thread snap and now I’m wanting to get an adult size of the herringbone scarf done (rather than the kid sized one I made last time).

So I’m getting a bunch of FO posts to publish during the week, and I will try to stay on top of this blogging stuff, I do enjoy blogging and hopefully after a month of commuting I will finally not finding it not so deadly.

So a while back my sister Carla made plans to crochet herself an hexagon blanket, it didn’t work out and while she managed to destash all the full balls, there was 500g of yarn remained in partial balls and the crocheted hexagons themselves.

With the yarn the way it was, in little butterflies from the frogged hexagons and larger bundles, it wasn’t conducive to either knitting and crocheting, but would be perfect for weaving. By using the larger balls for the warp and the little bundles for sections of weft, I could turn the yarn into something useful.

The warp on the second scarf was a bit more random, but meant that it has a racing stripe.

The two scarves were warped differently due to yarn restraints and the weft on the first is more regular (all the colors have an equal number of ends) and on the second I used up each of the colors in order and then used Chipmunk (which there was more of than any other color) to warp the full width.

I achieved the random stripes by pulling yarn butterflies from a bag, it worked surprisingly well.

For both of them I used the butterflies for weft, the first was entirely random, but for the second I was a bit more strategic alternating a large segment of Chipmunk with two and three random stripes in the other colors.

In the end I had two 3.5 yrd scarves and about 60g of yarn remaining. I have plans for that last little bit, mostly a baby scarf for baby Nico who I made the baby sweaters for.

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About me

Hi, I'm Christina, better known as the Bean behind Green Bean's String Factory. My factory/studio/office/bedroom is where I card, spin, knit, crochet and weave. I'm also in the process of learning how to quilt.